The search for bluefin tuna is on! A team of scientists from Stanford University and other partner institutions is scouring waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The goal - to place electronic tags in giant bluefin tuna to learn more about their migrations, behavior, and environmental preferences. Read about their adventures below...

Friday, March 9, 2012

Tuna Eruption

Brent Brewer poses with his fish, while Robbie Schallert keeps the fish oxygenated during surgery.

Maybe the bad weather last week bunched up the bait...or maybe the fish were there all along and not hungry...but whatever it was the tuna were snapping yesterday...and they were snapping early. The skeleton crew of Andre Boustany and Robert Schallert barely had a chance to get ready before Capt. Dale Britt and Mate Alan Scibal had tuna on the line. While one fish was getting tagged and released...another fish was being hooked...this continued for two hours straight. Luckily, we had three experienced anglers (although none of them had ever caught a bluefin) on board cause it was "fish on" all day. Keith Henry jumped in the chair first and alternated fish for fish with his best friend Brent Brewer... occasionally letting Brent's son Tyler get on the reel to feel the power. We tagged nine fish before 10:30am for a total of eleven bluefin on the day. The fish ranged between 180-320 lbs and all received Lotek archival tags. The tags record internal and external water temperature, as well as depth and light level (used to determine Latitude and Longitude).

When the bluefin turned off, the yellowfin turned on...we were routinely covered up by schools the whole afternoon. We caught nine of them and lost another five, along with two mahi mahi. The team was also visited by schools of hammerhead shark and a fully breaching humpback whale.

The weather kept us off the water today...but it looks like Sunday should provide us with another tagging opportunity!